Transformers: Rise of the Beasts

[sh9000]

[derex3592]

Did the same guy who directed Bumblebee directing this?  I remember he had a hard core love for the series and Bumblebee was pretty darn good. 

[Froy]

Just watched the the trailer.

They better put purple t-rex Megatron in (at less in a small cameo) or I'm out.

[Bolt]

4 hours ago, M'Kyuun said:

😄 How did I miss this back in October? Anyway, QFT.

 

You and I are eye to eye. I despise the stupid pacifier face they gave Bee. Too, his ridiculous inability to speak. And yeah, he was treated more like a pet in the Bee Movie than the millions-of-years-old skilled spy and combatant that he is, and that he's shown to be at the beginning of the film. I'm way beyond weary of the whole Bayformer feel and aesthetic that they continue to perpetuate in the live action films. I wish someone at Hasbro and Paramount had the chutzpah to go a different direction and leave Bay and his influence in the all-too forgettable past. I'm not saying full-bore G1. What I want to see are designs that work practically, similar to how the Binaltech/Alternators worked. Accordingly, I want to see folded legs or whatnot taking up backseat space- completely practical vehicle modes based upon working models that actually transform without a ton of CG magic and shredding of car parts into millions of weird and twisted shapes that make no sense mechanically. I love ILM, but FFS, I wish they'd found a practical solution to depicting transformations. Alternators should have been the basis, and Hasbro should have insisted on it.

Anthony Ramos is a former military electronics expert. Ah, the tired cliche of main protagonist being or having been military with either elite hacking skills or some other sort of high-end skill that will no doubt come into play during some contrived situation. At least Charlie and Sam were regular kids with no paramilitary backgrounds with elite skills. It just gets old. Perhaps I'm just jaded b/c I'm retired military, but I'm hardly elite at anything except bitching about Hollywood's perpetuation of military stereotypes.

RotB definitely treads familiar ground just by the look and feel of the trailer- too much Michael Bay influence for this TF fan. Mirage's transformation smacks of Jazz's from the '07 film, and I almost expected him to break into a Moonwalk as Anthony Ramos walks ahead without looking back. Cool guys used to not look back at explosions; now they don't look back at transforming bots doing spinning flourishes. From head-on, Mirage's (should have been Jazz, but whatever. Since Jazz died in the 07 film I guess they had to make him someone else) bot mode gives little indication that he turns into a car. 😒 Regarding the scale of the beasts, I'm divided: it makes sense in context of the bot modes, but not of the alt modes, which renders their taking of beast modes as disguise moot. To me, in the original Beast Wars cartoon, the scaling down of the bots so that the alt modes fit scale with the real creatures they were emulating made more sense. YMMV.

In the wake of my overly negative tone, let me leave on a positive note: I really dig that Cheetor transformation scene.  Pretty cool. 

You speak much truth, my brother 

4 hours ago, mikeszekely said:

I mean, I'll go see it. It's Transformers. I'm just not holding my breath...

same here.!

[mikeszekely]

1 hour ago, derex3592 said:

Did the same guy who directed Bumblebee directing this?  I remember he had a hard core love for the series and Bumblebee was pretty darn good. 

No. That was Travis Knight, Steven Caple Jr is directing this. The only thing I know of that Caple directed was Creed II (that is, I think he's directed more, I just don't know the other stuff). At least it's not Bay directing (he's a producer, but he was a producer on Bumblebee, too).

Edited December 2, 2022 by mikeszekely

[Thom]

Pumped Up!! That was a pretty good looking teaser. I love that we are staying with a G1 style Optimus - and I'm really hoping this is the tissue paper wiping the remains of the Bayformers out of existence! Bay needs to stay a producer and keep away from the cameras! 

And as mentioned, it's great that we can actually follow the action in this, rather than a blur of motion. Looking forward to this more and more.

 

[pengbuzz]

I just wish they'd stop giving Optimus a mouth. He doesn't need one!

[Old_Nash_II]

4 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

I just wish they'd stop giving Optimus a mouth. He doesn't need one!

But Optimus always had a mouth XD

 

[Thom]

One thing of note is the size of the Beasts. There are pretty close in size to the standard Transformers, whereas in the cartoon, they were sized to the animal they were mimicking. There was one scene where they went to the crashed Ark, before Optimus and the other had awoken, and they were tiny in comparison.

[JB0]

16 hours ago, Old_Nash_II said:

But Optimus always had a mouth XD

 

And this is why original toy accuracy is important.

[Seto Kaiba]

In a completely non-serious tribute to my childhood.

"Trukk not munky".

 

Who'd have thought the Transformers movies would be going on long enough to start mining Beast Wars and/or Beast Machines for content? XD

[Scyla]

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

In a completely non-serious tribute to my childhood.

"Trukk not munky".

 

Who'd have thought the Transformers movies would be going on long enough to start mining Beast Wars and/or Beast Machines for content? XD

I thought gorillas are apes not monkeys…

…

[mikeszekely]

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

In a completely non-serious tribute to my childhood.

"Trukk not munky".

Y'know, part of my initial dislike of Beast Wars was that I thought the idea of robots turning into realistic, organic animals was stupid. If they originally had the sort of mechanical design that they seem to have in RotB I probably would have been cool with it.

[Old_Nash_II]

5 hours ago, Scyla said:

I thought gorillas are apes not monkeys…

…

Bow your heads

[M'Kyuun]

On 12/1/2022 at 6:20 PM, Thom said:

Pumped Up!! That was a pretty good looking teaser. I love that we are staying with a G1 style Optimus - and I'm really hoping this is the tissue paper wiping the remains of the Bayformers out of existence! Bay needs to stay a producer and keep away from the cameras! 

And as mentioned, it's great that we can actually follow the action in this, rather than a blur of motion. Looking forward to this more and more.

 

Except, with some minor aesthetic differences held over from Knight's Bumblebee Movie, the look and feel of this film is still thoroughly influenced by Bay.  The transformations are still the same nonsensical shredding and illogical rearranging of car parts willy-nilly on the bot's body, the transformation sound effects are the same, the feel of it is still the same. The only hope of any goodness, as was the case with Bumblebee, is that the director actually has a personal connection to Transformers, and so too the scriptwriters, so at least the characters are depicted well enough to be familiar and likeable. Neither was the case with any of Bay's films b/c Bay didn't know squat about Transformers- zero connection to it, and it showed. Travis Knight is a fan, and it came through, even if he had to work around all the Bay-centric stuff. I'm thinking the same will be true for RotB- Hasbro and Paramount seem absolutely reluctant to depart from the visual language established in Bay's films, so to put their individual stamps on their films, any follow-on directors need to concentrate on character and telling a coherent story with a bit of heart thrown in for good measure.

 

[Thom]

23 minutes ago, M'Kyuun said:

Except, with some minor aesthetic differences held over from Knight's Bumblebee Movie, the look and feel of this film is still thoroughly influenced by Bay.  The transformations are still the same nonsensical shredding and illogical rearranging of car parts willy-nilly on the bot's body, the transformation sound effects are the same, the feel of it is still the same. The only hope of any goodness, as was the case with Bumblebee, is that the director actually has a personal connection to Transformers, and so too the scriptwriters, so at least the characters are depicted well enough to be familiar and likeable. Neither was the case with any of Bay's films b/c Bay didn't know squat about Transformers- zero connection to it, and it showed. Travis Knight is a fan, and it came through, even if he had to work around all the Bay-centric stuff. I'm thinking the same will be true for RotB- Hasbro and Paramount seem absolutely reluctant to depart from the visual language established in Bay's films, so to put their individual stamps on their films, any follow-on directors need to concentrate on character and telling a coherent story with a bit of heart thrown in for good measure.

 

All of the Baymovies are miles behind, IMO, Bumblebee. Having a different director in the chair, even if all the backing is the same, makes a big difference. Bay was in charge of all the hokey, blammy-crappy earlier movies that, again IMO, treated it all like a joke. Bumblebee was a great change of pace and really showed what was wrong with the franchise as a whole, that being Bay himself.

[Bolt]

I agree with what you guys are saying. Just don't forget that Transformers are STILL being marketed, mostly, to kids who don't know the difference between G1, Bayformers or the Bumblebee movie.  Heck, look at all the recent cartoons , they're all over the place. 

[M'Kyuun]

6 minutes ago, Thom said:

All of the Baymovies are miles behind, IMO, Bumblebee. Having a different director in the chair, even if all the backing is the same, makes a big difference. Bay was in charge of all the hokey, blammy-crappy earlier movies that, again IMO, treated it all like a joke. Bumblebee was a great change of pace and really showed what was wrong with the franchise as a whole, that being Bay himself.

Knight definitely brought some much-needed heart and soul into the franchise, as well as crafting a coherent and enjoyable story around Charlie's and Bee's friendship. I wish he'd had total freedom to change the look of the film, too. granted, he did streamline the characters in that beginning shot to bring them much closer to a G1 aesthetic while not oversimplifying them to the point of Sunbow. For my money, they're still a little too much bayformer, but the difference was striking nonetheless and quite honestly, I'd have been happy if Bay had gone with that as the look throughout his films rather than the churned, shredded, and randomly strewn metal bits look he ultimately adopted. However, I think Dropkick, Shatter, and Blitzwing all carry over the Bayformer aesthetic. Moreover, the choice of alt modes for Dropkick and Shatter were ill-considered considering the vast difference in scale and shape of the alt modes; they simply shouldn't have been depicted as triple-changers; there needs to be some logic in how these things mechanically transition, and unfortunately, CG animation can magically make anything turn into anything else regardless of how illogical said transition is. It's why I think the toys should have come first, and the movie designs based off of them following a prescribed and logical methodology for transformation. Too, that means no arms magically appearing out of the trunk if the arms fold up under the hood for transformation. I absolutely detest the license they take with having bot bits come out of anywhere on the vehicle mode for story's sake.  I also hate that the car modes are unaffected by the bot- legs and such need to go somewhere, so it would have been nice to see some inner car space compromised by bot bits, just like the toys.

11 minutes ago, Bolt said:

I agree with what you guys are saying. Just don't forget that Transformers are STILL being marketed, mostly, to kids who don't know the difference between G1, Bayformers or the Bumblebee movie.  Heck, look at all the recent cartoons , they're all over the place. 

I don't think G1 is being marketed to young kids as much as the 40-50 year old kids. We're the ones that Mark and Evan are addressing with all their BTS posts on Instagram, who keep Transformers fan conventions going, who are buying the vast majority of 3P products, esp G1 related stuff. Hasbro knows who they're pandering to, and they know we've got a hell of a lot more disposable income to buy stuff like Unicron, Star Saber, Deathsaurus, all the Gen Selects stuff, and yep, even the retail G1 stuff. We old-timers are the core audience for it and the primary market- we have nostalgia driving us, and a lot more money to spend on it than your average 8-year old. Nothing will convince me otherwise. I'm a big part of that market, as my many boxes and shelves full of these things will attest.

[Old_Nash_II]

Man, why they not used Jazz?

 

[Old_Nash_II]

33 minutes ago, sh9000 said:

Mirage with a Jazz and Skids "parts"

[M'Kyuun]

As with the Bay films, it's best to divorce all G1 association with the characters in the live-action films, as the respective directors are going to do whatever they feel like doing with them. I'm glad Travis Knight gave us the opening scene in the Bumblebee Movie, as that's the closest the characters have been depicted to their G1 selves since the beginning of the live-action films. I wish they'd been like that from the beginning, but alas, no. If RotB is any indication of the look of future films, adherence to G1 is going to continue to be of little consequence as the directors continue to follow Bay's pattern. As such, my interest is nil, and the toys will continue to suffer from the impracticality of the CG designs. 🙁

[TangledThorns]

I'd pay real money for a "live action" remake of the 1986 animated film.

But I'll still see this too.

 

[Thom]

8 minutes ago, TangledThorns said:

I'd pay real money for a "live action" remake of the 1986 animated film.

But I'll still see this too.

 

Keep the soundtrack! I'd buy a tub of popcorn and sit through three or four playings!

[Old_Nash_II]

https://news.tfw2005.com/2023/03/31/first-look-at-new-rotb-packaging-megatron-boxart-bumblebee-movie-megatron-design-finally-revealed-479197

Megatron face

[Thom]

Please, let that be the face they are using! Bay just seemed to want it be as little Transformers-like as possible! So glad other directors are choosing to go back to what it should have been.

Edited April 1, 2023 by Thom

[sh9000]

[sh9000]

[Old_Nash_II]

2 hours ago, sh9000 said:

Wheeljack Black Man with huge glasses...

Skids, I mean, Mirage in the Jazz body

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

The more I see that "wheeljack" the more I hate it.  It just looks so out of the place with the others. 

[sh9000]

[sh9000]

 

Edited April 27, 2023 by sh9000

[Old_Nash_II]

Aprende Bay, é assim que se apresenta o Unicron!

Edited April 27, 2023 by Old_Nash_II

[TangledThorns]

Looks good!

[sh9000]

Scourge and Unicron.

Edited April 27, 2023 by sh9000

[Thom]

Unicron! Looks good but damn do I wish this was a (as @TangledThorns mentioned)a live-action of the 1986 movie if they were doing Unicron.